Vettel takes a surprise second in Monaco

Ferrari were somewhat surprised to take second place with Sebastian Vettel after the mistake from Mercedes left Lewis Hamilton behind the German after his second pitstop.

Vettel had not been on the pace of the Mercedes through the race, although still managed to keep in touch to the back of Nico Rosberg with the gap coming down to a second at some times though the race, even though Lewis Hamilton was many seconds up the road.

Closing in on the Mercedes before the first stop, they thought he might be able to overtake the Mercedes in the pitstop, but being held up behind a Manor made sure that didn’t work.

The error at the end of the race from Mercedes brought Lewis Hamilton out alongside Sebastian Vettel, although crucially slightly behind the German at the safety car line which meant that he was stuck behind the Ferrari, who did a great job on old tyres at the end of the race.

When asked by Martin Brundle on the podium about his surprise second, Vettel said, Yeah, obviously a bit of a turnaround in the end, which was a bit of a surprise, but we were there in the moment when it mattered obviously we were able just to pip Lewis when we he came out of the pits.

“I think it was pretty close but I was pretty confident I was ahead. Yeah, I think we tried all race to put pressure on Nico but I think, first of all, he had the speed to respond and second, when we decided to pit we were probably a little bit too far back and the undercut didn’t really work.

“Nevertheless, P2 is a great result for the team, thanks for the hard work. It’s good to be always there and I think we were a lot closer in the race than in qualifying so hopefully we can keep up this trend.”

#news #monaco #formula1 #f1